Office Artifacts: Deborah Jancourtz

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Queen Elizabeth and a corgi. A rabbit coming out of a hat. An egg and frying pan. One is the ying to the other’s yang, and they are all part of the collection of salt and pepper shaker sets sprinkled around Deborah Jancourtz’s office. She estimates that she has 40 sets in her Bay State Road office and another 60 or so at home.

Jancourtz, a Center for Career Development assistant director of career education, started her collection decades ago, when she went to a flea market with a friend in Washington, D.C., and they spotted a trio of ceramic swans holding sugar, salt, and pepper. Her friend bought them for her as a gift and from there, Jancourtz says, the collection “kind of took on a life of its own.” 

Now, her collection is so vast and varied that friends and students take pride in adding to her menagerie. She has sets of dachshunds, mushrooms, milk and cookies, mittens, and teacups. The pairs of battery, University of Michigan shirt, and glass Coke bottle salt and pepper shakers all have a story Jancourtz is happy to share. “People now know about my collection,” she says. “They come in here and see, and then the next time they come back or they go somewhere, they bring me something. When students go home or go on a trip, they come back with a set from where they visited.” 

Jancourtz is among a passionate community of salt-and-pepper-shaker collectors. You might be interested to learn that before the invention of salt shakers in the 1920s, salt crystals were stored in small bowls, or saltcellars. The problem was that they attracted moisture, and thus the salt clumped together. According to Salon, the Morton Salt company had the idea of adding magnesium carbonate to its crystals, which prevented caking and made it easier to pour. As salt tended to be served alongside pepper, which was already in a shaker, matching shakers started to be made and sold. (The trend took off in the 1940s as decorative ceramics became more popular.) The distinction? Salt shakers had only one hole, while pepper shakers had two or three or more.

Jancourtz says she likes that her collection is quirky and whimsical. She describes her job as helping members of the BU community make “informed decisions” about their majors, internships, grad school options, and future employment, so she likes “to keep it fun because, you see, mostly students are totally stressed out. They don’t know what they want to do, they don’t know where they want to work, they don’t know what they want to major in. So I like having this fun, calm environment.”

Final question—which set does Jancourtz choose to display and shake on her table at home? She doesn’t. She says she keeps utilitarian grinders in her spice cabinet to use for cooking, but no decorative ones out for everyday use. 

We figure that for safekeeping, it’s probably better that way.

In our Office Artifacts series, BU Today highlights interesting artifacts professors and staff display in their offices. Have a suggestion about someone we should profile? Email amlaskow@bu.edu.

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